Epic: Travel Day

By Saint Greg

August 17, 2026

Good morning. It’s 3:15am in the Dallas-Fort Worth remote parking lot. I have a 5am flight to San Juan where I will board Norwegian Epic tomorrow.

Here comes my shuttle.

My suitcase is well below the 50lb limit.

This is about the longest I’ve seen my TSA line here. It turns out they don’t open till 4. I noticed another line on my way down here that wasn’t open yet.

As of my check in yesterday there was nobody in the middle seat on my row on the plane. Also nobody was in any of the Spirit first seats. They may offer a paid upgrade at the gate. In the past that’s been $75.

I got through security at 4:28 and boarding started at 4:25.

I was too late to hear if they had offers on the eight front seats. Two are empty.

Premium economy is rows 4-5. This row 3 is a standard seat but they charge you more to sit up front in a standard seat there. It was about $20 more than the regular seats I believe.

This is the premium economy seat.

The middle seat filled up. The other difference I see here is we have different armrests than above. They are just the top part of the armrest and they are all up by default.

I have a story about that row 3 seat.

When researching this seat I was looking for videos on the premium economy. The only one I could find was a guy who didn’t know the layout. He was in row 5 premium economy and just assumed row 3 was also premium economy. He volunteered to swap seats with someone on row 3 so a couple could be together. He thought he was just moving closer to the front but he actually gave up his additional space and legroom.

He thought since he gave up his seat the airline, who didn’t ask anyone to swap seats, owed him a free bottle of water. He asked like three times and was really surprised they didn’t give it to him. Then he made a mad video about it.

I’m not able to sleep much on planes. I just kicked back with my headphones on and podcasts playing the entire flight and I did get about 35 minutes of combined sleep (5,10,20).

We are preparing for landing.

I never got my coffee this morning so I’m going to get it here.

This is a large coffee over here.

I was kind of late after waiting for that coffee. There are only three bags left. Fortunately mine is one of them.

I asked my Airbnb host if I can get in early back when I was waiting to order coffee. She said they’re cleaning it now and when they’re done, she’ll let me know and I can get in. It’s noon now. Regular check in isn’t until 3pm.